


Ouzo dreams

by arabellagaleotti



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Drinking, Existential Crisis, Gen, Greece, M/M, Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark Friendship, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Russian Natasha Romanov, Sexuality Crisis, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Русский | Russian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:41:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25813738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabellagaleotti/pseuds/arabellagaleotti
Summary: Tony and Natasha are drunk and reminiscing. That's the gist of it.-“Who did you use to be?” Natasha asks him, and they’re lying side by side in some hotel room like they're in a grave, like they’re dead, just decomposing hunks of meat without thoughts or brains or —“Which one?” Tony asks.
Relationships: Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark
Comments: 14
Kudos: 53





	Ouzo dreams

“Who did you use to be?” Natasha asks him, and they’re lying side by side in some hotel room like they're in a grave, like they’re dead, just decomposing hunks of meat without thoughts or brains or — 

“Which one?” Tony asks. His throat hurts, probably shouldn't have drunk all that— everything. He had a lot, before. It goes down easier when he’s laughing, and he was. Natasha can be fun, he's realized. He’s never really hung out with her before, one on one. The team’s still new, and they’re all still getting used to each other, so there’s still time.

“I don't know,” Natasha admits. “You pick.”

“I was —” the voice catches. “I was afraid and alone, and I was nobody, not even with my big-shot father. Not even my name mattered.” The ceiling rotates above him, okay he  _ really _ shouldn’t have drunk so much. 

“What happened?” she asks, and he just feels her breath in and out before he answers. It’s steady, the moving of her ribcage against his own. He feels maybe not so alone in this room, the one shrinking as he watches. 

“I got tired,” he says. “Tired of being powerless. That's when I...I don't know, I started making myself worth something, even if it's only trouble. I got my peers to like me by playing pranks and fucking around and...I just evolved from there."

“Me too,” Natasha says. “I got so tired of Russia. Of being cold.”

“So you moved to California?” Tony laughs.

She shrugs, next to him. “Well, I went to Greece, first, but it didn't last.” Greece. He went to Greece, once. Doesn't remember much, but what he does remember was nice. Drinking, laughing, girls on his lap, the sun. Beach. Water, his head slipping under, that feeling — cool blue silk. Peace. The muffled world above him. His lungs straining, kicking up towards the surface to gasp in air. Peace snatched away from him.

“No?” Tony asks. He wants to know more about her. There’s something morbidly interesting about her, like serial killers, learning how they murdered the victims in startling detail. 

“No,” she agrees bitterly. “Nothing with me ever really lasts.”

He swallows. He doesn't know what to say. He finally decides. “What happened?”

“I liked a boy, and he liked me. We had...we had fun. We danced and drank and swore at each other, his apartment had this balcony, we'd just sit out here and have little dinner parties with his friends. Then he found out who I was.”

“Oh.” 

He remembers that girl, the one he met in the coffee shop. They’d flirted, and laughed, and he’d bought her a coffee because she was broke. And then the paparazzi showed up, and she was confused, she was laughing,  _ do they have the wrong person?  _ And then she found out they didn't. She didn't leave — no, she stayed. She saw the opportunity, and she was trying to take it. It wasn’t like a long-term deception, or anything particularly bad, but he’d liked her, he genuinely had. He’d wanted to spend more time with her. Then that got taken away from him. 

“Yeah. Guess he didn't want to be with an infertile Russian spy.” She shrugs. "Can't blame him."

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” she says again, and sighs. “Seems so...strange to think about it now I’m removed from it.”

They’re silent, for a long time. Tony just looks at the ceiling and remembers his childhood, remembers reading under the covers so Jarvis wouldn’t see, and doing math exercises with his tutor, the surprised look on her face when he turned out to be smarter than he should be.  _ Way  _ smarter than he should be. That’s when all his problems started.

“I wonder what would've happened if I choose someone else?” Tony asks, “if I hadn’t chosen this version of Anthony Edward Stark. Tony Stark,” he tries the name out on his tongue. “Tony Stark.” he laughs, a low rocking sound that hurts his chest but he does it anyway. “Oh, god,” he gasps. “I’m Tony Stark. Jarvis used to call me Eddie. I could've been Eddie." Oh, god, he's filled with fucking regret to the brim. He wishes he wasn't himself. He can't change now, change the things he's done.

“I don't know,” Natasha whispers. “I wonder the same things. What if I had stayed in Russia? Stayed in Greece? What then? Who would I be? Would I be happier? They're useless questions, really.”

“You think?” Tony asks, and he sounds like a child again, with a high, whiny voice. 

“Yeah, I do. No way of knowing the answer. No way of changing it. No way of living it.”

He sighs. “You’re right.” She always seems to be. 

“Tell me something,” she says currently, “something you've never told anyone.”

He turns his head, and they look at each other. Is he going to? 

“I — I used to be gay,” and just like that, the words are out of his mouth. God, he’s been wanting to say that since he was 16 and groping a boy in his dormitory, lights and shirts off. 

She shifts. “Used to be?”

“Yeah. uh, well — bi. I used to be bi.”

“How can you stop being?” she asks like she needs to know. 

“Conversion camp, “ he swallows and reiterates, “Well, it was as much of a ‘camp’ as concentration camps were. Not exactly marshmallows over a fire.”

“Oh my god.”

“Yeah. My father was a dick,” he sighs.

“More than that.”

Tony shrugs. “You tell me, now.”

She smiles. “Does my Greece thing count?”

He exhales, deliberating. “I guess. You never told anyone?”

“No,” she says like she regrets it. 

“Okay then.” Tony smiles and looks over at her, who’s smiling. He sits up. “Let’s go get drunk at the bar. Well, drunk _ er _ .”

She lets out a peal of laughter. “Genius.”

—

“You were right,” Tony says, barefoot on the beach. Natasha turns towards him, pushing back her hair as it flies into her face. The waves crash in the distance, seagulls crying distantly. 

“About what? I know, but about what?” she asks. She looks so happy, wind-ruffled hair, freckles appearing on her skin, eyes getting those smile lines. 

“They were useless questions, but that doesn't mean they were worthless,” he says. “There's a difference.”

She smiles. “Yeah, there is.”

He looks like he’s still got something to say. “You what I said, about being —” the words linger on his tongue.  _ Bi.  _

“Yeah?”

He turns towards her, smiles a little, hopefully. “Maybe I still am.”

She smiles at him. “Come on, let’s go get plastered on Ouzo and French wine and stuff ourselves with olives until we burst.”

He laughs and turns to walk up the beach with her towards the bustling Greek town. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! leave a comment!
> 
> xx


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